This.
A million things had to go right over the course of billions of years for us to be having this conversation right now.
Is this to blame for the Fermi paradox?
- Thread starter RAMA
- Start date
This.
A million things had to go right over the course of billions of years for us to be having this conversation right now.
Of course for that to mean anything you would have to calculate all the other ways and places intelligent life could arise in the universe.
I don't think it means that we're it. But I think it may mean that this isn't an easy road and the likelihood that the universe may not be teeming with sentient life that we can communicate with right now. Over 14 billion years, some have probably already lived and died, others may still be evolving, and some struck down before ever reaching sentience.
While I have no reason to believe it's at all likely for life to exist anywhere else in the universe.
But since the rest of the universe wouldn't care one way or the other we'd be at least as important as anything else, and more important to those who do care.
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So how convinced are you that life in the entire universe is unique only to earth? Or on a scale, do you think it is more likely life on earth is unique or that life exists on some number of other planets?
I'm not convinced at all, I just have no reason to believe life extends beyond Earth.
Who knows what is "likely"? We have no idea.
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That's just it: we are only and exactly as important as we decide we are. The existence or non-existence of other life forms doesn't change this; importance is specific to our own value judgements, to the limited extent that our values are actually consistent.
That's fair.
I actually consider the evolution of life itself as the singularity.
We are in a barred spiral--so there is some clumping.
The early solar system was violent--and we had a large moon that was closer to us when the Earth was hotter and had--I assume--more smokers, more violent tides.
NOVA had a program about the Channeled Scablands and these huge water tornadoes. You sometimes see a hole in a creek bed with a central stone in it--a hydrodynamically formed mortar and pestle.
Some regular tornadoes have suction vortices--with only two--you get a double helix.
These storms are updrafts. I have seen small steam devils below a plume from the ABC Coke plant in Tarrant Alabama
The whole planet was a giant organic chemistry lab blindly doing hundreds of iterations.
Abiogenesis/Evolution as computation.
Instead of smokers--take a look a soap nozzles. Evolution actually did better work than real intelligent design:
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/tim-harford-on-trial-error-and-our-god-complex/
How do you design that nozzle? It turns out to be very important. Now if you ascribe to the God complex, what you do is you find yourself a little God. You find yourself a mathematician; you find yourself a physicist — somebody who understands the dynamics of this fluid. And he will, or she will, calculate the optimal design of the nozzle. Now Unilever did this and it didn't work — too complicated. Even this problem, too complicated.
But the geneticist Professor Steve Jones describes how Unilever actually did solve this problem -- trial and error, variation and selection. You take a nozzle and you create 10 random variations on the nozzle. You try out all 10, you keep the one that works best. You create 10 variations on that one. You try out all 10. You keep the one that works best. You try out 10 variations on that one. You see how this works, right?
And after 45 generations, you have this incredible nozzle. It looks a bit like a chess piece — functions absolutely brilliantly. We have no idea why it works, no idea at all.
Earth needs a big Moon and lots of water and smokers to "solve for life."
That's the answer to the Fermi paradox.
We're the one nozzle that worked.
We lucked out at Monte Carlo--in more ways than one.
We are in a barred spiral--so there is some clumping.
The early solar system was violent--and we had a large moon that was closer to us when the Earth was hotter and had--I assume--more smokers, more violent tides.
NOVA had a program about the Channeled Scablands and these huge water tornadoes. You sometimes see a hole in a creek bed with a central stone in it--a hydrodynamically formed mortar and pestle.
Some regular tornadoes have suction vortices--with only two--you get a double helix.
These storms are updrafts. I have seen small steam devils below a plume from the ABC Coke plant in Tarrant Alabama
The whole planet was a giant organic chemistry lab blindly doing hundreds of iterations.
Abiogenesis/Evolution as computation.
Instead of smokers--take a look a soap nozzles. Evolution actually did better work than real intelligent design:
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/tim-harford-on-trial-error-and-our-god-complex/
How do you design that nozzle? It turns out to be very important. Now if you ascribe to the God complex, what you do is you find yourself a little God. You find yourself a mathematician; you find yourself a physicist — somebody who understands the dynamics of this fluid. And he will, or she will, calculate the optimal design of the nozzle. Now Unilever did this and it didn't work — too complicated. Even this problem, too complicated.
But the geneticist Professor Steve Jones describes how Unilever actually did solve this problem -- trial and error, variation and selection. You take a nozzle and you create 10 random variations on the nozzle. You try out all 10, you keep the one that works best. You create 10 variations on that one. You try out all 10. You keep the one that works best. You try out 10 variations on that one. You see how this works, right?
And after 45 generations, you have this incredible nozzle. It looks a bit like a chess piece — functions absolutely brilliantly. We have no idea why it works, no idea at all.
Earth needs a big Moon and lots of water and smokers to "solve for life."
That's the answer to the Fermi paradox.
We're the one nozzle that worked.
We lucked out at Monte Carlo--in more ways than one.
I don't believe that. Obviously I have no proof, but with at least three planets with water on them in this solar system, I find it hard to believe there aren't at the very minimum, several dozen life bearing planets in this galaxy. The universe trades infinity with chance, and with that much time and space, there has to be something out there.
RAMA
Life bearing? Sure. Planets where life has reached sapience and reached out to the stars? I'm not so sure.
Like I said earlier, a million things had to go right over billions of years for us to be sitting here having this conversation right now.
I would love for the universe to be teeming with life and civilizations, but I just don't know.
I still think this is a non-point, at least with the little we currently know. Several 100 millions things have to go right for a person to win the lottery, yet it happens almost every week.
The point alone says nothing about how rare intelligent life is in the universe, because we do not know how many opportunities there are for it to arise.
You believe that, but have absolutely no idea what the odds are. If the odds of life spontaneously arising are small enough then this planet may indeed be very unique. Your certainty is based only on your desire for it to be so.
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I got 4 answers for the fermi paradox, and I really think they are significant, if you entertain the fringe of belief. Even if you wish to ignore them as valid concepts, they at the very least are incredibly interesting ideas for science fiction.
1) God like aliens allow us to exist. I know it's an odd one, however its almost quite rational when you consider the scale of time and size of the universe(we've yet to even discover galaxies that acting under odd physics). Ironically the biggest reason why FTL so obviously doesn't exist, is because from somewhere in the universee over billions of years there would be superiors to ourselves. When you look at teh scale of time it's not exactly far fetched to assume something is allowing us to exist. With understanding of genetics and time itself, it's not at all inconcievable that we ourselves might develop godlike abilities.
Personal question: how would you react if you had true proof of this.
2) Pan-spermia is the norm, if it is possible that microbes can propigate across the galaxy it's almost innevitable life on earth isn't at all unique to earth and the galaxy is filled with our genetic cousins. The fermi paradox assumes intelligent life has had time to cross the galaxy, what if the seeds of life have been propigated across the galaxy. Although this is a strange theory if it turns out that pan spermia is possible(we'll know by the end of the century) whether or not life has crossed the galaxy eternaly. The point is it would dismiss the fermi paradox, because it assumes there was a siginificant head start. If asteriod do spread microbes which we will soon no, this head start scenario won't exist.
Peronsal question: Why are we so set in the belief that evolution is confined to one signular planet. Why didn't the cambrian explosion happen across the entire galaxy at once.
3) What if we have detected alien signals? This one is a big one because we assume that somehow alien signals are important as communications. It's just as likely that detection of alien radiowaves, might easily give us an understanding of some form of physics we really shouldn't know. I.e. what if we detect alien power technology that makes the ingredients to producing a fusion reactor incredibly obvious. The potential for a sucidal teen to destroy the planet becomes a given.
Peronsal question: Seriously what do you really think would happen if we discovered a signal. If you look at the history of nuclear weapons, and the way nuclear technology was developed it's is not at all far out to think that there might be some form of a cover up. If you look at the guys that developed these weapons most were all found to have a deep sense of grief. We take it for granted that nuclear yields maxed out at so many megatonnes, however we really won't know if something else was figured out.
4) Ancient Aliens are real, the reason there is no evidence of this is because we humans would not want there to be. For aliens to hide their existance from us requires an assumption that they would want to hide from us which is a very human way of looking at things. The better assumption is that representatives from the planet told them leave mother earth alone.
Personal Question: If you were abducted tomorrow, would you want disclosure or would you be both altruristic and selfish at the same time and try to keep earth pure.
1) God like aliens allow us to exist. I know it's an odd one, however its almost quite rational when you consider the scale of time and size of the universe(we've yet to even discover galaxies that acting under odd physics). Ironically the biggest reason why FTL so obviously doesn't exist, is because from somewhere in the universee over billions of years there would be superiors to ourselves. When you look at teh scale of time it's not exactly far fetched to assume something is allowing us to exist. With understanding of genetics and time itself, it's not at all inconcievable that we ourselves might develop godlike abilities.
Personal question: how would you react if you had true proof of this.
2) Pan-spermia is the norm, if it is possible that microbes can propigate across the galaxy it's almost innevitable life on earth isn't at all unique to earth and the galaxy is filled with our genetic cousins. The fermi paradox assumes intelligent life has had time to cross the galaxy, what if the seeds of life have been propigated across the galaxy. Although this is a strange theory if it turns out that pan spermia is possible(we'll know by the end of the century) whether or not life has crossed the galaxy eternaly. The point is it would dismiss the fermi paradox, because it assumes there was a siginificant head start. If asteriod do spread microbes which we will soon no, this head start scenario won't exist.
Peronsal question: Why are we so set in the belief that evolution is confined to one signular planet. Why didn't the cambrian explosion happen across the entire galaxy at once.
3) What if we have detected alien signals? This one is a big one because we assume that somehow alien signals are important as communications. It's just as likely that detection of alien radiowaves, might easily give us an understanding of some form of physics we really shouldn't know. I.e. what if we detect alien power technology that makes the ingredients to producing a fusion reactor incredibly obvious. The potential for a sucidal teen to destroy the planet becomes a given.
Peronsal question: Seriously what do you really think would happen if we discovered a signal. If you look at the history of nuclear weapons, and the way nuclear technology was developed it's is not at all far out to think that there might be some form of a cover up. If you look at the guys that developed these weapons most were all found to have a deep sense of grief. We take it for granted that nuclear yields maxed out at so many megatonnes, however we really won't know if something else was figured out.
4) Ancient Aliens are real, the reason there is no evidence of this is because we humans would not want there to be. For aliens to hide their existance from us requires an assumption that they would want to hide from us which is a very human way of looking at things. The better assumption is that representatives from the planet told them leave mother earth alone.
Personal Question: If you were abducted tomorrow, would you want disclosure or would you be both altruristic and selfish at the same time and try to keep earth pure.
Yes but you truly have to appreciate how low the odds would be, and our knowledge of exoplanets is really dismissing this.
You don't have 1 pool of water on one planet on one star.
You have 100 million pools of water, on 100 billion planets, over 1000 million years to choose from.
How so? Just knowing that there are trillions of planets does nothing to inform us of the probability of life arising unless we can find evidence of life on some of these planets. Once you find such evidence you can start making meaningful predictions about the abundance of life in the universe, but not until then.
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knowing there are planets and knowing the compositions of solars systems are two different things.
Understanding exoplanets has given us some rather solid info on what we should expect.
I don't think you really get how much that aspect of the equation has been changed.
There are three planets-moons in our solar system alone with liquid water.
And there is nothing that makes our unique solar system inherinetly special.
Regardless you should read some of my answers.
We simply don't know that. We don't have enough knowledge of the universe to make that kind of blanket statement.
